February 24, 2013 // 11:19 pm - Recently a Sony patent was uncovered which may be used to detect pirated software though tracking video game load times.

Below are the details, to quote: "Sony has filed a new patent which may be useful in combating piracy.

The patent was filed by them way back in August 2011, and according to it, if the load times are not within the range they have set, the software could be flagged.

For the tech to be effective, a standard average load time has to be set–specific or range–and if any software that exceeds the time set, it will be easy to block it. This way of blocking games is a little impractical because sometimes drives may not function as expected due to wear and tear.

You can check out the description of the patent below.

For example, if an authentic game title is distributed exclusively on BDs having a total benchmark load time of 45 seconds on a game console BD drive, the acceptable range of load times could be from 40 to 50 seconds. Thus, a total measured title load time of 4 seconds would be outside of the acceptable range of total load times for a legitimate media type.

Seek time: In another example, if an authentic game title is distributed exclusively on flash drives having a total benchmark load time of 5 seconds, the acceptable range of load times could be from 4 to 6 seconds. However, an illegitimate game product embodied on a hard disk may also have a total measured title load time of 5 seconds, which would be within the acceptable range of total load times for a legitimate media type.

In this instance, each segment of the benchmark load time can be compared to the corresponding segment of the title load time to differentiate between the media types, again using threshold ranges. For example, a benchmark seek time associated with the flash drive could be 150 milliseconds, with an acceptable seek time range of 130 milliseconds to 170 milliseconds.

Thus, a measured title seek time of 10 ms associated with the hard disk drive would be outside of the acceptable range of seek times for a legitimate media type.

Here’s a second example: In another example, a benchmark throughput associated with loading the media product from a flash drive could be 30 megabytes per second, with an acceptable throughput range of 20 megabytes per second to 40 megabytes per second.

Thus, a measured title throughput of 100 megabytes per second associated with loading the media on a hard disk drive would be outside of the acceptable range of throughput for a legitimate media type."

From the BENCHMARK MEASUREMENT FOR LEGITIMATE DUPLICATION VALIDATION PDF:

FIELD

The present disclosure relates generally to piracy detection, and more particularly, to systems and methods for measuring and employing benchmarks for legitimate duplication validation.

BACKGROUND

In recent years, computing devices have developed universal appeal as a primary source of information, entertainment and communication. End-user products integrating these devices, such as televisions, DVD players, game consoles, computers and the like, are created, changed and refined to facilitate consumer access to digital content of all sizes and types.

Thus, consumers are often able to acquire large amounts of digital content, such as games, television shows, movies, applications, etc., with a single click of a button. Such digital content is often made available for a premium by device manufacturers and third party developers, who depend on consumer licenses of their content to recoup their research and development costs. These licenses allow the consumer to use and enjoy the content without infringing on the intellectual property rights of the manufacturers or developers.

Unfortunately, as technology rapidly progresses and content becomes more widely available and accessible, consumers have turned to piracy to illegally acquire certain digital content, and in some cases, entire libraries of content. Digital rights management (DRM) software and tamper-resistant hardware are employed by manufacturers to discourage illegal acquisitions. However, pirates are often able to reverse engineer such attempts and circumvent the protection entirely.

SUMMARY

Thus, there is a continuous and ongoing need for novel and improved digital rights management schemes that provide additional layers of protection against piracy. Embodiments of the invention meet this need and others by providing a system and method for measuring and employing benchmarks for legitimate duplication validation.

According to an embodiment of the invention, a method for validating legitimate media products associated with a legitimate media type is described. The method comprises loading a first media product having a first media type on a computing device, measuring a first load time for the first media product on the computing device, establishing a threshold range of acceptable first load times using a second load time for the legitimate media type associated with the legitimate media products, and determining whether the first load time is within the threshold range.

A system for effecting this method is also described herein according to an embodiment of the invention. For example, a system for validating legitimate media products associated with a legitimate media type is described. The system comprises a computing device that loads a first media product having a first media type and that measures a first load time for the first media product, a processor that calculates a second load time for the legitimate media type, establishes a threshold range of acceptable first load times using the second load time, and determines whether the first load time is within the threshold range, and a memory coupled to the processor.

I think it's not a problem because we'll need a multiman which can emulate loading times of blu-ray game like WinUAE does with amiga games, and games load in real time of loading on amiga from diskette

It'll be just like the cinavia protection that Sony implemented to try to deter pirates from watching downloaded movies only to hurt the actual people that legitimately paid for movies. It later was fixed through cfw, which will ultimately happen with this as well as long as the scene stays fruitful with such great programmers.

Scratched discs will load slower as the drive will have to retry. This will do nothing to stop pirates, and only screw over legitimate users. Again.

So now they will have to maintain a database as to how fast games should load? So if I want to turn on my PS3 and play a game, I will have to update my firmware, apply a game update, and then update this database? Gotcha. Sony - the consumer friendly company...

It seem that they just want to port their own SecuROM copy protection also on the PS3; SecuROM works by checking the density of data being read from a disk. Data density of data accessed from a disk would degrade from the inside of the DVD to the outside of the DVD, but SecuROM allows a vendor to add a specific pattern to the degradation of data density. If that pattern isn't found, then SecuROM will determine that the disk is not valid and the program refuse to start

But playing backups from HDD make it faster to load. Maybe they gonna detect fastloader, not slowloaders?

What about all those games that cache to the HDD and load from there? MGS4 is one that caches 4GB at least and runs from HDD till the next part then it caches that part. It hardly uses the disc except to copy over the data to HDD.

Originally Posted by PS3GAMER20111

one more thing after playing online on PS3 for 7 months i think that playing offline is much more peaceful and enjoyable than playing online.

Took you 7 months to figure that out? I was big into online multiplayer games with Quake 2 and that was awesome. Then Unreal Tournament was as good. These days there is nothing like those old multiplayer games. The gamers have changed, the games have changed and nothing these days feel the same. Its a shame as it was so much fun.

When Sony banned my console I didn't care as its more fun playing singleplayer mode these days so they did nothing to me. Jokes on them as I have spent less on games since they banned my console. LOL

I would imagine in practice they will only check for things loading faster than an optical drive, not slower.

Ni No Kuni on PS3 actually already has this behavior already; intentionally or not. If you play a rip of the blu-ray from HDD, especially internal, the game freeze up randomly when various threads get out of sync. The PSN version doesn't have this issue though.

Sony never think about the real world. In the real world drives get dust on them making load times longer. DVDs get scratches on them making load times longer. DVDs get warped making load times longer. DVDs get worn making load times longer. Want me to keep going...

In the real world after 1 year there will be a lot of consoles banned for using old or damaged disks and having an overused drive.

But playing backups from HDD make it faster to load. Maybe they gonna detect fastloader, not slowloaders?